Dr Kailash Gupta, director of the Indian chapter of the International Emergency Management Society, who has done extensive research on the management of mass corpses after disasters, said that outbreak of diseases due to the cadavers is “a myth created by the media”.

The people who handle the bodies should maintain some safety measures but for the rest of the public, they pose no threat, argued Dr Gupta.

“A myth has been created that bodies can cause an epidemic outbreak. There are few links between dead bodies and disease outbreaks during any disaster,” said Dr Gupta, who has done his doctoral research on mass fatality management during the Haiti earthquake. In research and guidelines throughout the world, no one has been able to draw linkages between epidemic outbreaks and corpses in any disaster, he stressed.

One such guideline produced by the World Health Organization in 2004, frequently cited by Dr Gupta, states that they “continue to be witness to the use of common graves and mass cremations for the rapid disposal of dead bodies owing to the myths and beliefs that corpses pose a high risk for epidemics”.

One argument in favour of ruling out an outbreak of disease is the fact that with the desiccation of dead bodies, the body temperate plummets, creating an unfavourable environment for microorganisms to survive. Hence, their transmission by any vector is unlikely.

In Nepal, two days after the Great Earthquake on April 25, bodies were strewn across the floor of a room by the entrance of the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital. Many remained unclaimed for days. The foul smell emanating from these and the lack of proper preservation techniques led many to suspect a potential disease outbreak. For Dr Gupta, disease outbreak was less of a concern than the lack of a proper storage facility.

“I am trying to convince the authorities here to preserve the body for as long as possible,” said Dr Gupta. Nepal lacks many proper storage facilities for dead bodies but rudimentary preservation techniques, like packing the corpses in ice cubes, can help. This is not much of a problem in rural areas, where people are able to easily identify corpses and conduct the necessary funeral rites.

Initially, faced with a preponderance of corpses, authorities had suggested mass cremation if the bodies were not collected soon. But Dr Gupta considers this a bad idea. “We have special beliefs and emotional attachments to those who have died,” he said.

In one of his journal articles, Dr Gupta argues that improper handling and mismanaged identification efforts of the body, including mass cremations and mass graves, can have a “Zeigarnik effect on the surviving family members and the community”. According to the Zeigarnik effect, people tend to recall tasks left incomplete more than completed ones. Hence, the loss of dear ones without proper closure can haunt families throughout their lives.

“Families should be allowed to conduct final rites in their own tradition. Mass cremations are against traditions in India and Nepal and such acts can leave surviving families in disarray,” said Dr Gupta.

Sharing his experiences during the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, Dr Gupta said that corpses littered on one side of the street even as people slept openly on the other side fearing violent aftershocks. In desperation, many even began burning the bodies with petrol and kerosene. “Even during such desperate times, no epidemic outbreak related to the corpses was reported,” said Dr Gupta.

For bodies that remain buried under rubble, chemicals should be used on the surface and the search should continue, Dr Gupta stressed.